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Falling Out of Bounds, and Into the Spotlight

Mario Manningham snaring a 38-yard pass from Eli Manning to ignite the Giants’ winning drive in Super Bowl XLVI in February.Credit
Barton Silverman/The New York Times

A regulation football field measures 360 by 160 feet, and even with 22 players roving about, there is plenty of open space — more than an acre of it. On the fringes of that vastness, away from the collisions and the contact, a certain artistry prevails.

The sideline and the end line are the domain of the sport’s acrobats, its tightrope walkers and contortionists, where the fundamental art of catching a pass becomes a balance-beam routine. Everywhere else on the field, a receiver concerns himself with only the catch itself, the physical act of securing the ball. Along the margins, another factor comes into play: his feet.

Both must land in bounds for the reception to count. Agility is a plus. Awareness is a must. It has to be when the difference between infamy and an iconic moment is determined by millimeters.

Mario Manningham tiptoed into fame in Super Bowl XLVI in February, snaring a 38-yard pass from Eli Manning that ignited the Giants’ winning drive. When Manningham caught the ball, in stride along the near sideline, only a few inches separated his feet from the boundary, from obscurity.

“There’s nothing harder than a sideline catch, to me,” Manningham, now with the San Francisco 49ers, said in a telephone interview. But, he added, “there’s nothing prettier, either.”

Manningham said so because of the elevated degree of difficulty. A well-timed slant, a perfectly-executed post, a surprise screen — all are attractive in their own right. But there is something alluring, almost romantic, about the sideline catch, how a receiver skirts a boundary without actually going beyond it, as if openly flouting the rules.

There is a reason that, as a boy, Domenik Hixon would play football with friends and envision himself making the Super Bowl-winning catch in the back of the end zone.

“You never thought about catching it over the middle of the field,” said Hixon, a receiver with the Giants. “You want it to be a highlight, something that people remember.”

And they do, for those who master this art are never forgotten. That night three and a half years ago in Tampa, Fla., when Holmes dragged his feet inbounds as his body fell out, the world witnessed a skill that Holmes, now with the Jets, had been perfecting for years. He practiced it in high school. He honed it at Ohio State. And now, few players in the N.F.L. are better at it than Holmes.

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The most important aspect, naturally, is catching the ball first, and then having the wherewithal to land in bounds. That is why Lal tells his pupils, “See the ball; feel the sideline.”

As the ball zips toward him, Holmes relaxes his lower body. Let your legs go dead, he says. (Victor Cruz of the Giants also favors this method, he said.) When Holmes catches the pass, his feet, rooted on the ground, just flop, and he falls down.

Before sustaining a season-ending foot injury in September, Holmes would practice this technique every Friday after practice. He would stand a few inches inside the sideline and catch 50 passes from Lal — 25 thrown to his left, 25 to his right — and then, and only then, Lal said, would Holmes feel comfortable heading into a game.

“It becomes a second-nature thing,” Holmes said when asked in early September about his approach. “You have to know your boundaries.”

Hakeem Nicks of the Giants has a similar routine. Before games, he lines up 5 yards from the sideline. He runs toward it as the pass is thrown, catching it with his front foot planted inbounds and his back foot dragging behind him. That approach is called plant-and-drag, and it is preferred by many receivers and coaches around the N.F.L.

Amani Toomer, considered an expert at sideline catches, learned it that way nearly 15 years ago. Working with his position coach on the Giants, Jimmy Robinson, Toomer developed a timing mechanism. Making sure that his front foot was in, Toomer would kick with his other foot.

“By the time I did it, I was kicking the ground,” Toomer said. “You’re starting to do the technique before you actually catch the ball. It’s simple if you think about it.”

It sounds simple to polished receivers. It looks more difficult than it is, they say.

Of course, they say that now, as professionals, after years of training, after experiments and tweaks and instances of getting one foot down but not the other. Although the plant-and-drag method seems natural to him now, Nicks said that at the University of North Carolina he adhered to the toe-tap philosophy — tapping his toes with short, choppy strides as he neared the sideline.

“Odds are, you’re going to have two of those taps in,” Lal said. “But with the super slo-mo now, it’s possible that the taps don’t match up. It works, but it can be dangerous.”

Why?

“Because on the sideline,” he added, “every inch matters.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 8, 2012, on Page B15 of the New York edition with the headline: Falling Out of Bounds, and Into the Spotlight. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe